What is a working wall?
November 19, 2009
We talk a lot about working walls and model them on our talk for writing training so it is fantastic to get some feedback from teachers about what they are doing in their classrooms.
A working wall is a temporary display for any or all curriculum areas that shows the build up or progress towards an outcome. It is not a neatly presented, double-backed display but an ‘in the moment’ display captured whilst working, that becomes a scaffold for children and an explicit visual support of the journey. In literacy, by the time the children get to the writing stage there will be many supports for the writing on the working wall and teachers will be modelling how to use the ideas and practises that have been generated.
I particularly like this series of images because they show so clearly the place of talk for writing in the teachi
ng sequence. Can you spot the story-mapping, warming up the word and the support from visual images? They also take the children through the stages of imitation and innovation. So many children need to linger longer in the imitation phase in order that they embed the language patterns and start to find their own voices. Children will then naturally move into the innovate and finally invent phases.
When talking about book displays in The Reading Environment, Aiden Chambers states
they deeply influence the mental set of the people who see them.
I see no reason why working walls should have any less of an influence.
Our thanks go to Mark Cole at West Croft Juniors for these wonderful pictures of his working walls linked to talk for writing. It would behard hard not to succeed at writing in this classroom.
Which aspects of talk for writing have had the most impact upon your children’s writing?
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professional development, talk for writing | 
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Posted by alijoy
